then you got to stay, no choice, like when Marshal Cleveland’s woman put a bent and rusted steak knife in his back thirteen times when he come home mean and pissed on the floor. Motherfucker wouldn’t die. Al said it was no big thing. Not nothing at all. The good Lord makes those decisions, so Marshall been excused for a while longer. He been back on the dayshift since April, up in the Mill, loading them cork bales in the mill so fast that they have to shut it down every two hours and call the Millwright. Loads it so fast, it jams and he just sittin in the break room, looking fine at the window, sipping.
Come September, things gonna change and get downright complicated. Ain’t no real dirt where I’m going, but come next June, when it’s time, I’m changing back into these grimy threads, coming back home, straight up.
When the mosquitoes from the river got nasty, we’d light up a few fat cattails, stick em in the cracks between the pilings and bathe our bodies in the sweet smoke hanging from the docks. Talked about the day Garfield had lost his head when the guide wires on the tram rail split and the cab fell over one hundred feet and his head was sheared off when he was thrown clear through the front windshield. Cleese Coates nodded, said that one of his friends had been on the swing shift and had seen Garfield’s head bounce over the rails and land next to the cork bails s tacked beside the empty semi’s. We all mumbled, thanking the Lord that it wasn’t our time, wasn’t our fault, wasn’t our shift and glad as hell that we didn’t put in for that job for a flimsy raise of sixty two cents an hour driving that piece of shit. Tough was what you wore cause nothing else fit. Straightforward. Skin tight. Leave it at that. Pulse - 87